Awareness and Response of College Librarians towards Cloud Computing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Abstract

The evaluation of the awareness and response of librarians in college libraries on cloud computing was highlighted in this study. The objectives of the study were to ascertain the awareness level, response, and difficulties associated with cloud computing adoption in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. On the nature of the study, this has been descriptive research by use of survey approach and use of quantitative method has also been made. The location of the population was Government general colleges in southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 66 librarians from both male and female colleges comprised population. An adopted questionnaire by Idhalama O.U and Fidelis (2020) was used to collect data. The quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS version 22 in order to obtain the mean scores and standard deviation. Some of the findings are that most of the librarians knew about cloud computing and hence they were not lacking behind. Librarians have a fairly favourable reaction towards cloud computing. Similarly, the respondents had to think about how cloud computing should be practiced in college libraries. The study also identified the following major constraints: There is a question and answer relationship of trust between the cloud service provider and the consumer on aspects such as; integrity, ownership, privacy of data as well as the lack of legislation that may guide /guard deployment of cloud computing. The study recommends that the government should make policies to regulate the activities of cloud service providers and allocate funds to college libraries regularly as well librarians should be trained at regular intervals to update their knowledge about cloud services.